Julian Assange’s full extradition hearing began today at Woolwich Crown Court at Belmarsh with the prosecution pleading for the media to stop characterizing the US effort as a politicized war on journalism, and it ended with Assange’s defense providing a comprehensive summary of the many reasons that journalists, human rights activists, and defenders of a free press have been sounding the alarm.

Assange, appearing thin in a grey suit, sat alone behind glass behind both legal benches, taking notes. Early in the proceedings, he looked up to the public gallery and raised a fist.

James Lewis QC, arguing for the Crown Prosecutorial Service, which acts on behalf of the United States in its extradition request, explicitly asked journalists covering the case not to report on it as a matter of free speech or the right to publish. Lewis worked continuously to narrow both the defense’s arguments and the judge’s focus, portraying the indictment as solely a matter of exposing informants in the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and the State Department cables.

In the afternoon, defense lawyer Edward Fitzgerald QC laid out in detail the ways in which the extradition proceedings constitute an abuse of process, because they have been brought for ulterior political purposes, as an attack on freedom of speech, and fundamentally misrepresent the facts in order to extradite Assange to the US, where he faces torture, unusual and degrading treatment.

CPS Makes Dramatic Claims, Without Evidence

The CPS made dramatic claims of damage to the United States’ interests around the world, claiming that the unredacted publications put local informants at risk. But when it came time to detail that damage, the prosecutor ultimately had to admit that the US government has not been able to prove any deaths have resulted from WikiLeaks’ publications.

The prosecution then spent the rest of the morning recounting each charge, repeatedly claiming that Assange “aided and abetted” Chelsea Manning’s procurement of classified cables for the purposes of publishing.

Opening arguments were made on the first day of the US extradition hearing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, with the prosecution claiming his leaks risked lives while the defense argued that his case was politically motivated.

Speaking to the gathered media, Assange’s father John Shipton condemned what he called the “ceaseless malice” directed at his son by US and UK authorities. He cited a determination by UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer, who said that Assange had been subjected to prolonged “psychological torture.”

Assange spoke : said he was struggling to hear proceedings and he cannot concentrate ( none of us can hear well !)

Such was the swell of support for Assange on the street that the noise from protesters could be heard from inside the courtroom. This prompted Assange himself to comment on the level of noise, saying that while he appreciated the support and understood that people “must be disgusted,” the sound was making it difficult to concentrate on proceedings.

Journalists themselves also complained on Twitter that the sound quality in the courtroom was not good, although the situation seemed to improve as the hearing went on.

‘Lives at risk’

As arguments got underway, Lewis claimed for the prosecution that revelations made by WikiLeaks had put political dissidents and journalists in danger, but no names of supposed victims were offered.

Lewis said unnamed persons had “disappeared” following the leaks, but admitted there was no proof that their disappearances were linked. He also argued that journalism was not an excuse for breaking laws.

A London court is set to begin hearings to determine whether or not jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be extradited to the US on charges of conspiracy where he faces life in prison.

Assange has languished in London’s top security Belmarsh Prison since he was dragged from London’s Ecuadorian Embassy by British police in April last year and subsequently slapped with 18 charges under the US Espionage Act, which could see him sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.

The Australian journalist and whistleblower had, for the seven years prior, been living in the London embassy, where he had sought asylum after skipping bail in relation to a Swedish sexual assault investigation, which he and his lawyers maintain was politically motivated (and which was later dropped).

Now, Assange’s fate is hanging in the balance in the Woolwich Crown Court with Judge Vanessa Baraitser hearing arguments for and against his extradition. The hearing is expected to last until Friday.

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‘Journalism is not a crime’: Australian MP says charges against Assange must be dropped after visiting him in UK prison

Assange’s lawyers have long argued that he would not receive a fair trial in the US and that the case against him is purely political, amounts to criminalizing the legitimate activities of journalists, and poses a threat to free speech.

WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 but came to prominence in 2010 when it published a classified video showing a US military helicopter killing around 12 people, including two Reuters journalists.

The video was part of a massive cache of military material leaked to the whistleblower site by former army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who served seven years in prison before her 35-year sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama in 2017.

Manning was jailed again in 2019 (and remains behind bars) for refusing to testify against WikiLeaks, saying she would rather “starve to death.”

Assange’s critics say that his activities do not amount to journalism and pose a threat to the national security of the US. During the 2016 US presidential election, WikiLeaks angered the US establishment, releasing leaks from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) which showed party leaders trying to restrain Bernie Sanders.

The US is seeking to imprison Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing the 2010/2011 leaks, which exposed the reality of the Bush Administration’s “War on Terror”: Collateral Murder (Rules of Engagement), Afghan War Diaries, Iraq War Logs, Cablegate, and The Guantanamo Files.

The US began its criminal investigation against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in early 2010. After several years, the Obama administration decided not to prosecute WikiLeaks because of the precedent that this would set against media organisations. In January 2017, the campaign to free Mr. Assange’s alleged source Chelsea Manning was successful and President Obama gave her a presidential commutation and freed her from prison.

In August 2017 an attempt was made under the Trump administration to pressure Mr. Assange into saying things that would be politically helpful to the President.

After Mr. Assange did not comply, he was indicted by the Trump Administration and the extradition request was set in motion. Chelsea Manning was re-imprisoned due to her refusal to cooperate with the grand jury against WikiLeaks.

President Trump has declared that the press is “the enemy of the people.” It is the first time the 1917 Espionage Act has been used to indict a publisher or journalist. Press Freedom organisations have emphasised that the indictment criminalizes normal newsgathering behaviour. The indictment applies the Espionage Act extraterritorially. Assange was publishing from the United Kingdom in partnership with UK media and other European and US press. The indictment opens the door for other journalists involved in the 2010 publications to be prosecuted. The USA will make the extraordinary claim that foreigners are not entitled to constitutional protections, so Julian Assange cannot benefit from the First Amendment.

This is the speech I gave at a demonstration last night in Melbourne for Julian Assange, whose extradition trial begins February 24th.

Julian Assange started a leak outlet on the premise that corrupt and unaccountable power is a problem in our world, and that problem can be fought with the light of truth. Corrupt and unaccountable power responded by detaining, silencing and smearing him. His persecution has proved his own thesis about the world absolutely correct.

Power is the ability to control what happens. Absolute power is controlling what people think about what happens. Humans are story-oriented creatures, so if you can control the stories that the humans are telling each other about what’s going on, you can control those humans.

This is the power of narrative management. This is why governments and billionaires use propaganda, advertising, buy up media conglomerates and fund think tanks, employ public relations and spin doctors, buy up troll armies and bot farms: because they know that those who control the narrative, control the world.

You can do whatever you like, as long as you can control what people think about what you’re doing.

No one understands this better than Julian Assange. He famously said that if wars are started by lies, then they can be stopped by truth. That’s the basis of WikiLeaks. Bringing truth to the public in the most pristine and revolutionary way possible. They made it so people could leak documents to them safely, and then they released them with minimal redactions and editorial. Like many online innovations it cut out the middle man, and the middle man, in this case, are the media spinmeisters who normally present information with an overlay of establishment-friendly narrative.

You know the ones. The ones that are like, “Here’s what I found out, but more importantly, this is what you should think about what I found out”.

It had immediate effects. Global reach, exposing the most corrupt roots of the most powerful people in an environment where the growing alarm at the GFC, climate change and endless war meant that people were hungry for the truth about why these things are still happening despite their unpopularity and despite our every effort to stop them.

This is the seventh and latest episode in Credico’s ongoing radio exploration of the prosecution and persecution of the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder. Keep listening for late-breaking updates on the approaching extradition trial of Julian Assange in London.

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Over 100 doctors are urging the UK government to stop the “psychological torture” of Julian Assange, and send him to a hospital. It’s their fourth such letter since the journalist appeared in court.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may die in a UK prison, having “effectively been tortured to death,” claim Doctors for Assange, a group of 117 doctors from 18 countries, in a recent letter published in The Lancet, a leading medical journal.

The letter says that Assange requires urgent medical care, and has been exposed to “prolonged psychological torture”. The group once again asks for him to be moved to a university teaching hospital for medical assessment and treatment.

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Australian senator calls on govt to bring Assange home as journalist faces ‘death’ if extradited to US

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson on the other hand has claimed that Assange’s health is improving and he is no longer being held in solitary confinement. Hrafnsson spoke to journalists ahead of next week’s court hearing on the US extradition request.

Assange’s health has been worrying his supporters for a while now.

Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, visited Assange in prison in May 2019, and reported that the journalist showed “all the symptoms typical of prolonged exposure to psychological torture”.

By that point, Assange had spent seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London living in a converted office under constant surveillance, before being detained in Belmarsh maximum security prison. Soon after Melzer’s visit, the public saw Assange at his case management hearing on October 21, 2019. “Doctors for Assange” says that he appeared “pale, underweight, aged, and limping, and he had visibly struggled to recall basic information, focus on his thoughts, or articulate his words”. By the end of the proceedings, the journalist told the judge “he had not understood what had happened in court”.

On Saturday, there will be a march from Australia House in London to Parliament Square, the centre of British democracy. People will carry pictures of the Australian publisher and journalist Julian Assange who, on 24 February, faces a court that will decide whether or not he is to be extradited to the United States and a living death.

I know Australia House well. As an Australian myself, I used to go there in my early days in London to read the newspapers from home. Opened by King George V over a century ago, its vastness of marble and stone, chandeliers and solemn portraits, imported from Australia when Australian soldiers were dying in the slaughter of the First World War, have ensured its landmark as an imperial pile of monumental servility.

As one of the oldest “diplomatic missions” in the United Kingdom, this relic of empire provides a pleasurable sinecure for Antipodean politicians: a “mate” rewarded or a troublemaker exiled.

Known as High Commissioner, the equivalent of an ambassador, the current beneficiary is George Brandis, who as Attorney General tried to water down Australia’s Race Discrimination Act and approved raids on whistleblowers who had revealed the truth about Australia’s illegal spying on East Timor during negotiations for the carve-up of that impoverished country’s oil and gas.

This led to the prosecution of whistleblowers Bernard Collaery and “Witness K”, on bogus charges. Like Julian Assange, they are to be silenced in a Kafkaesque trial and put away.

Australia House is the ideal starting point for Saturday’s march.

“I confess,” wrote Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, in 1898, “that countries are pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world.””

We Australians have been in the service of the Great Game for a very long time. Having devastated our Indigenous people in an invasion and a war of attrition that continues to this day, we have spilt blood for our imperial masters in China, Africa, Russia, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. No imperial adventure against those with whom we have no quarrel has escaped our dedication.

Deception has been a feature. When Prime Minister Robert Menzies sent Australian soldiers to Vietnam in the 1960s,

All journalists will be at risk if Julian Assange is extradited to the US and jailed for publishing classified information, a packed debate at London’s Frontline Club heard today.

Mr Assange faces up to 175 years behind bars if convicted of charges relating to the publication of documents, video and diplomatic cables exposing US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Intervening from the floor, National Union of Journalists president Tim Dawson said that we needed to urgently wake up to the “monstrous” case against Mr Assange.

“If successful this will place every journalist under fear of it being used against them,” he said, citing advice from the Law Commission to the Theresa May government which recommended legal changes to allow those in receipt of classified information to be prosecuted as well as those who leaked it.

“When I published information relating to Britain’s complicity in torture I knew I risked going to jail,” former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray said. “But I’m shocked at the implication that the journalists who take and publish that information could go to jail.”

The Legal, Systemic and Reputational Implications of the Assange Case debate saw UN special rapporteur on torture Professor Nils Melzer describe the conclusions of two independent medical experts who examined Mr Assange that he was a victim of psychological torture.

“I was sure the British government would investigate,” he said. “After all this is not some rogue state.”

Yet all he received was an insulting tweet from then foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt accusing him of interfering in the British judicial system.

It took the government five months to formally reply to his report.

Pointing out that Mr Assange’s lawyers complained of being denied access to their client, he concluded:

“This case is in the hands of the public, because the judiciary has proved unable or unwilling to assure due process.”

Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith said that governments in Britain and the US increasingly tried to conflate “national security with political embarrassment,” while former New York Times general counsel James Goodale warned that the arrest of Glenn Greenwald in Brazil indicated other governments were already using the precedent of Assange’s prosecution to clamp down on critical journalism.

I am one of a total of 17 members of our parliamentary group who have nominated Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize. These brave people should not be criminalized, but should be recognized and honored. The war criminals and their henchmen must be held accountable.

We feel that Assange, Manning and Snowden have to be recognized for their “unprecedented contributions to the pursuit of peace and their immense personal sacrifices to promote peace for all”. With the unveiling of US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and the global surveillance program of the US secret services, the three have “exposed the architecture of war and strengthened the architecture of peace”

We wish to nominate Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, in honour of their unparalleled contributions to the pursuit of peace, and their immense personal sacrifices to promote peace for all.

The year 2020 began with Julian Assange arbitrarily detained and tortured, at risk of death according to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and over 100 medical doctors, for revealing the extent of harm and illegality behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. 2020 began with Chelsea Manning in her secound year of renewed imprisonment for resisting to testify to a Grand Jury empaneled against Wikileaks, after having also been imprisoned seven years previously and tortured, following her disclosures that were published by Julian Assange. 2020 began with Edward Snowden in his 7th year of asylum for revealing illegal mass surveillance, in defence of the liberties underpinning revelations such as those made by Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.

The Collateral Murder video, provided by Chelsea Manning in 2010 and published by Wikileaks, honoured the dignity of those slain needlessly in war. It gave names and identities to victims whose humanity had been kept from public view, capturing the last moments of life for a young Reuters photojournalist,

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been moved out of solitary confinement in a British prison after a series of petitions by his legal team and fellow inmates, his organisation says.

The Australian has been held almost incommunicado with severe restrictions on his access to visitors in Belmarsh prison near London since April as he awaits his US extradition trial set to start on February 24.

Wikileaks ambassador Joseph Farrell says the 48-year-old was moved out of solitary in the medical wing into a different wing with 40 other inmates on Friday.

He says the breakthrough occurred after his legal team and three separate petitions by inmates to the prison governor that his treatment was unjust and unfair.

After meetings between the prison authorities, Assange’s legal team and inmates, he was transferred.

“The move is a huge victory for Assange’s legal team and for campaigners who have been insisting for weeks that the prison authorities end the punitive treatment of Assange,” Mr Farrell said in a statement to AAP.

Assange is set to face trial next month to determine whether he should be extradited to the US, where he has been charged with 17 counts of spying and one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

The charges relate to allegations Assange tried to help former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning protect her digital identity as she accessed classified Pentagon files on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

WikiLeaks helped publish thousands of those files, including some that revealed US war crimes in both countries. His case is widely viewed as a litmus test for the protection of journalists’ sources.

Mr Farrell said Assange’s transfer out of solitary after nine months is a small victory given that he’s still being denied adequate access to his lawyers.

At a recent case management hearing solicitor Gareth Pierce said the defence team had only been allowed three hours with Assange to discuss the case.

“He is still being denied adequate access to his lawyers as even the judge recognised at a case management hearing in Westminster Magistrates Court,” Mr Farrell said.

“And campaigners continue to insist that Assange should not be in jail at all, least of all in Belmarsh high security prison.”

In this first podcast, hear compelling clips from William Kunstler and John Pilger on extra-judicial and arbitrary detention as well as interviews with Nathan Fuller, director of the Courage Foundation which supports whistle blowers and runs Julian’s public defense campaign, Coleen Rowley, retired FBI Special Agent and whistle blower, expert on criminal procedure constitutional law, and Anthony Papa, artist/activist and the author of 15 to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom, and This Side of Freedom: Life after Clemency.

In this second episode of Live on the Fly – Julian Assange: Countdown to Freedom, Randy Credico delivers an exclusive interview with the legendary documentarian John Pilger—a man whose searing vision and crusading exposés of government greed, hypocrisy, tyranny, injustice, poverty and heartbreak have fired the passions and inspired the activism of millions.

In this interview, Randy speaks with Estelle Dehon, public law barrister at Cornerstone Barristers, as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange appears in the Westminster Magistrates Court, London for an administrative hearing relating to his extradition to the United States.

Assange has been kept in prison since April 2019, when he was forcibly evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy by officers from the Metropolitan Police. Monday’s hearing is one several due to take place before the whistleblower’s extradition trial in February. Assange faces multiple charges in the U.S.

In this fourth installment of “Live on the Fly – Julian Assange: Countdown to Freedom,” Randy Credico speaks with Stefania Maurizi, a trailblazing investigative journalist who has worked on all WikiLeaks releases of secret documents and partnered with Glenn Greenwald to reveal the Snowden files about Italy.

Nathan Fuller starts the interview by first providing startling updates on Julian’s case, including a serious and troubling double standard: the U.S. government intends to apply the Espionage Act to foreign nationals while limiting the so-called privileges of the First Amendment to U.S.

A lawyer representing Julian Assange has told a London court that the WikiLeaks founder’s legal team is being restricted from meeting him and it is hampering preparation for his trial on extradition to the United States.

Queen’s Counsel Edward Fitzgerald told Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday that he has had great difficulty gaining access to Assange in Belmarsh prison to discuss evidence and take instructions from the Australian.

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WATCH: Assange caught on camera leaving UK court in prison van after US extradition hearing

The 48-year-old is wanted in the US for allegedly conspiring with army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to expose military secrets.

“We simply can’t get in as we require to see Mr Assange and take instructions … we need time to deal with that,” Fitzgerald said.

“We need to deal with [the] points raised in the US Attorney General’s statement. The reality is we are not ready to call the main body of our evidence,” the senior lawyer added.

Assange appeared in court via video link, saluting his supporters with a raised fist during the proceedings.

Lawyers representing the United States also made applications seeking more time to prepare for the hearings and Judge Vanessa Baraitser agreed that the extradition hearing will be split in two.

“He will remain in custody in the cells until you have indicated to this court that you have concluded such matters as you were able to manage,” the judge said.

The journalist’s extradition hearing will now be heard during one week in February and three weeks in May and June. The first part will take place at Woolwich Crown Court and it will cover arguments that the extradition is politically motivated and an abuse of process.

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UN envoy says UK ‘contributed’ to Assange’s torture, urges British govt to release him immediately

Assange has been in custody since he was dramatically removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London in April 2019. He was initially jailed for the minor offense of skipping bail after going into hiding in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden over sex offense allegations made against him in 2010.

«The Panel therefore invites the Guardian to issue a clarification that (a) the plan in relation to Mr Assange’s ability to be able to leave the Ecuadorean embassy was not devised or instigated by Russia; and (b) there was nothing illicit about the “plan” as described in the Article and that it would have involved the legitimate use of diplomatic immunity to allow Assange to leave the Embassy and travel to a third country.»

A case management hearing was held this morning in London for imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who appeared via video link Belmarsh prison. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser confirmed that Assange’s full extradition hearing will begin on 24 February 2020, but it will now take place over three or four weeks rather than the initially scheduled five days.

Assange’s defense team outlined the main arguments it will make and witnesses it will call at the full hearing in February. Lawyers announced they will argue that the US-UK Extradition Treaty should not allow Assange’s extradition because it includes an exemption for political offenses.

“We say that there is in the treaty a ban on being extradited for a political offence and these offences as framed and in substance are political offences,” Assange’s lawyer Edward Fitzgerald told the court.

The defense will also include evidence of prejudicial statements from US government officials against Assange, along with information resulting from Chelsea Manning’s US court martial.

Barry Pollack, representing Assange in the United States, said,

“Mr. Assange’s legal team today previewed the powerful reasons he should not be extradited to the United States to face prosecution under the Espionage Act for publishing truthful, newsworthy information that exposed wrongdoing by the United States government.”

Assange’s legal team will present evidence medical evidence as well. Assange’s deteriorating health conditions, particularly since entering solitary confinement on the health ward at Belmarsh, have been of ongoing concern. Following a medical visit in May, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer wrote that Assange was suffering from psychological torture. Last month, more than 60 doctors signed an open letter calling on Belmarsh to release Assange to receive proper medical care immediately, warning he could die in prison without adequate treatment.

Finally, Assange’s defense will include evidence from the Spanish investigation into the surveillance of UC Global, a private security company which spied on Assange’s legal, medical, and personal visits in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and sent recorded material to the CIA.

UC Global director David Morales has been arrested in Spain in connection with the illegal surveillance,

Julian Assange has been forcibly removed from political asylum and has been arrested. He is no longer in the Ecuadorian Embassy and instead is in British police custody. Julian Assange now faces the prospect of extradition to the USA to face 175 years imprisonment for publishing facts delivered to him as a journalist and those facts revealed systemic government corruption and war crimes. These were the exact issues he required protection from and why he accepted Ecuadorian political asylum.

Julian Assange is an Australian Citizen who had been “arbitrarily” detained for over 8 years and more recently had endured over 1 year of torture in the form of continuous solitary confinement. Deprived of sunlight, contact with the outside world and proper healthcare. The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner on Feb. 5, 2016 determined that Julian Assange’s arbitrary detention “should be brought to an end”.

Julian Assange is an awarded and respected international journalist who has never incorrectly published any news.

We respectfully request the Prime Minister and/or the Foreign Minister of the Australian Government intervene and ensure Julian Assange’s freedom of safe passage and return to his home Australia or any other location that Julian Assange requests to travel to. We further respectfully request that the Australian Government where influence can be made with friendly nations, that the Australian Government ensure that no extradition order is effected on Julian Assange from the USA that may otherwise impinge on his ongoing freedom of passage and existence.

Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Centre of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post Global Research articles on community internet sites as long the source and copyright are acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original Global Research article.

A Spanish judge will question Julian Assange on a Spain-based security firm thought to have spied on him in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. His lawyer hopes it may help thwart the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition to the US.

Set for next week, the questioning is part of a criminal inquiry the Spanish High Court is carrying out into UC Global, a private security company suspected of gathering surveillance on Assange and passing it further to US intelligence services.

“December 20 is an important day,” Aitor Martinez, a lawyer in charge of defending Assange in Spain, told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency. The Spanish judge will go to Westminster Magistrates Court “to receive a video conference testimony from Mr Assange as a victim of the alleged spy plot,” he revealed.

The firm’s name surfaced this summer when El Pais newspaper reported that it was eavesdropping on Assange during his exile at the Ecuadorian diplomatic mission in London. Citing recordings it has had access to, the paper alleged that the firm – tasked to guard the embassy – specifically focused on Assange’s legal matters discussions.

Now, Assange’s input is invaluable as it can pave the way to shooting down US efforts to try the publisher on their soil, Martinez explained. “Obviously, once Spanish justice receives such testimonies from Mr. Assange … the British justice should rethink the usefulness of his extradition [to the US],” he argued.

It can become a reason for the United Kingdom to deny an extradition request issued by the country where basic legal guarantees are not ensured.

As the inquiry progressed, the Spanish High Court arrested the company’s owner David Morales, a former member of the Spanish military, believed to have liaised with the US side. He was released on bail, but his company’s premises were searched and his bank accounts frozen.

As the story unfolded, it emerged that UC Global operatives also monitored Russian and American visitors to Assange, handing their profiles to US intelligence.

Morales himself didn’t try to hide his ties to the “American friends.” According to Germany’s NDR broadcaster, which filed a complaint against UC Global for having targeted one of its journalists who visited Assange,

The ongoing proceedings against Australian citizen Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, presently held in Belmarsh Prison near London, display a grave erosion of time-honoured principles of human rights, the rule of law, and the democratic freedom to gather and share information. We would like to join the extraordinary line of earlier protests in the case.

Fifteen years ago, the world was shocked by serious circumventions of the right to due process and fair trial when, as part of the U.S. war on terror, the CIA ignored local authority to abduct people in secret flights from European jurisdictions to third countries where they were subjected to torture and violent interrogation. Among those voicing protests was the London-based International Bar Association; see its report, Extraordinary Renditions, January 2009 (www.ibanet.org). The world should stand firm against such attempts to exercise superior, worldwide jurisdiction and to interfere in, influence or undermine the protection of human rights in other countries.

However, since WikiLeaks released evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has for nine years punished Julian Assange and deprived him of his freedom. To avoid extradition to the United States, Assange was compelled to seek asylum in the London embassy of Ecuador in August 2012. In April 2019, Ecuador — in violation of international asylum laws — handed Assange over to British police, and his private legal defence documents over to U.S. agents.

After exposing extensive U.S. abuse and power projection as a threat to international law and order, Assange himself experienced the full thrust of the same forces. Extortion of other countries to make them and their judicial systems bend the law is to undermine and violate human rights treaties. Countries must not allow the diplomacy and intelligence power culture to contaminate and corrupt the fair administration of justice in accordance with law.

Great nations like Sweden, Ecuador, and Britain have servilely complied with U.S. wishes, as documented in two 2019 reports by Nils Meltzer, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Among other things, Melzer concludes that,

“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate,